A colorful, vibrant and unique world, with a gorgeous little deer with lightning antlers. Great abstract application of the theme. I didn't seem to notice any difference between Ultra/Epic, and I played the PCVR build using Virtual Desktop with the Quest 3... That said, it looks like you went for the miniatures theme AND the electricity theme, clever... I really liked the art design, the idea of a biomechanical forest was great... and I liked the 'move the world around' with grab mechanic... but I will say the ever-present dangling cables, the small scale/god mode and using the left stick to steer the 3rd person deer that also rotated the camera combined to reduce the wonder of the art/level design. I'd suggest separating input for the character from camera manipulation, but I'm a guy that would rather turn in person than use a stick. Really clever, really cool, but a couple things detracted from the experience. Nice one!
Viewing post in Tales from an Electric Forest (VR) jam comments
Thank you for the feedback! It's funny - in the earlier part of the jam, the scale started a lot bigger, 4x as big, so you really feel the forest. But because I personally only use the move-the-world-around grip controls for locomotion in the game, I found that it was easier to control things by making the scale smaller so you don't have to move around as much, and can reach a lot "farther" in the world since you're a lot bigger in proportion. The "miniature" theme was purely unintentional. :)
I had a feature that allows you to resize the world similar to how it is done in Tiltbrush by grabbing both grips and moving them closer/farther, but it had a bug that I didn't have time to figure out, so I cut it unfortunately. It would have been useful for those who want more immersion.
Both left and right thumbsticks worked the same, so you can get through the whole game using only the right thumbstick for locomotion, and only use the left trigger for directing the deer. I wonder if it would have been less confusing if I didn't include thumbstick forward/back locomotion and only had grip locomotion? Or perhaps have the left thumbstick simply move/strafe both the deer and the camera at the same speed like a third-person controller? I still gotta figure that out. Thanks for the feedback.
Hello again, so here's my comments from a second playthrough, trying to avoid what got in the way of the game, namely using the stick. Once I realized I just had to find the fireflies and make my around to do so with grab hands, it was so much better. It felt like I was pulling myself through the electric foliage, rather than turning and clipping into it incessantly. Point and hold click, and Electro-Bambi came cantering over. It was a lot easier to enjoy the details this way. Not sure if I did something wrong, but after gathering the fireflies to the center, nothing further happened? Regardless, a lot more fun on a second go, thanks for insight to your process.
Thanks for the additional playthrough! In the game jam version, there's a bug that prevents the story from advancing after you gather the fireflies to the center. If you want to see the rest, then I invite you to download the post jam build, where you'll get to actually use the fireflies to fight some interesting looking blackout enemies when you reach that point in the story.